Organisations need to be continually aware of changes in the market if they wish to continue to fulfil customer expectations. Influencing factors such as industrialisation and the change from craftsmanship based operations to large mass producing companies had an impact on how plants organised their processes as did the perception of employees in terms of their significance in the firm. The changes in the market during the 1950s led to the consumers suddenly finding themselves in a favourable

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... sition and their desires and wishes were transmitted to this market by means of their purchasing patterns. Only those companies that satisfied these desires and wishes were ultimately successful. The ability to be able to differentiate oneself from the competition had become vital. One example in this respect was to position oneself as the market leader from the quality perspective. Debating of the relationship between quality management and cost started and developed into the broader discussion of "Quality" as a concept. In making the decision to introduce a quality management culture the intention of an organisation was to also stimulate a change in the mentality of its workforce. In raising awareness of the significance of quality amongst their employees management was actually subconsciously uniting everyone under their company's culture. Globalisation of markets placed additional burdens upon the strategies of companies and the resultant stress on flexibility and increased productivity resulted in a shift in the focus of industrial concerns. This led to, amongst other things, opportunities for quality and process improvement systems such as Total Quality Management, Lean and Six Sigma to flourish. With such improvement systems the involvement and engagement of employees in the decision making processes has become both fundamental and essential. 217 Due to these aspects enterprises began to turn away from the Tayloristic approaches and hopefully start with a human production concept in the third millennium. In this stu [...]